the long drive to take up residence in the village. I think we must we must
have gone through all the emotions during the 8.5 hours on the road and
couldn't really decide if we were excited, apprehensive, scared, or just
wondering what the hell we were doing. The only thing we could agree on was
that as usual it was always great to leave the city behind and head out into
the wilderness beyond.
The house was like a busy ants nest on arrival. People rushing around trying
to finish things off. On initial inspection the house looked great but we
knew that there would be a few things to be finished off in the days and
possibly weeks to come. Even though we found quite a few things that we
weren't happy with or that needed fixing, we knew that it would get done to
our satisfaction in the end. It's a bit annoying and frustrating, but Rome
wasn't built in a day, and it would have taken a whole lot longer in Africa!
On the whole we are very pleased with our new home. It will take a while for
us to get settled in properly, especially as we still have the garage and
main bedroom to be built sometime. Living in a building site, what a
pleasure to look forward too! As is usual for us our first couple of nights
would be spent indoor camping. Airbed on the floor, Mufasa's fridge in the
corner, living out of boxes, nothing changes.
We arrived with Mufasa jammed full of stuff, the question was, where was it
going to go. The worrying thing was that we would be expecting delivery on
Tuesday of our goods that had been shipped from the UK, where would all that
go? We don't have much storage space yet as this will come in the bedroom
extension later on, and the garage. The kitchen is a fair size and storage
is no problem there, but clothes, books, garden tools, mountain bikes, and
general stuff would have to squeeze in somewhere or just stay in the boxes
and suitcases they came in. We had been given a delivery window of 5pm to
7pm on Tuesday for delivery of the shipping goods. They finally arrived at
just after 11pm! The poor guys in the truck looked knackered having been on
the go since 7am and with many a km under their belts that day. It was
exciting to see all our stuff again, and with all the boxes accounted for we
went to bed waiting for morning to come and have fun opening 29 early
Christmas presents. It was fun going through everything, but there was
always the thought in the back of the mind of 'would everything be in one
piece'. Thankfully, only the one casualty, a cracked wine glass, we will
live with that considering the long journey it has gone through. Anyway, the
idiots who had all our stuff in storage in the UK for 5 years manage to
damage a hell of a lot more!
The big problem we have initially and it will take some weeks to be resolved
is the things we don't have and have either ordered or still need to decide
on. Kind of essential things like, sofa, chairs, and dining table.
Thankfully we have two beds from the UK, one to sleep on now and another
waiting for its room to be built. Living out in the sticks also makes
delivery of large items a bit of a problem. Either it cannot be done, or it
costs a fortune. So Mufasa will have to do a few trips to collect things,
African style! We just hope that the weather plays ball at the relevant
times, it didn't on Thursday. We had to do a 250km round trip to collect a
washing machine. Lovely day. Sun all the way there. On the way back a
different story. It looked a bit grim towards the mountains. Little did we
know. We hit some pretty heavy rain about 20km away from home, but things
had been much worse in the village. We arrived back after 17h30 and the rain
was just easing off. A huge storm had just dumped about 100mm in under an
hour. We were lucky and had a small amount that ran under one of the side
doors the full length of our lounge. Some people had been flooded out, and
the side wall to the Springside Estate just a few hundred meters away along
Polo Way had all been downed by the gushing torrent that hit it. Well to be
honest I think an asthmatic 90-year one-legged old lady could have pushed
the wall over considering the tiny footings the huge wall seems to have been
built on. Drainage will be an issue for us ahead especially when the garage
is built as out plot has quite a slope on it, need to think about it
sometime.
Our time seems to be a precious commodity at the moment. There are so many
things we want to get on with in the garden, and also getting out and about
cycling etc. I got on my bike for the 1st time only Saturday morning. God my
butt was sore 16km later, not to mention a lack of puff. It has been over 3
years since all the biking I did in Europe and it will take some time to get
fit again. The Drak MTB Xperience happened on Sunday starting at the Country
Club just next door, if it had been next weekend or perhaps the one after
then I may have convinced my body to take part. It looked like a good event
but even the 20km would have pushed me at the moment. At least I could
console myself with watching the epic cricket against South Africa. Boy what
a game, England are certainly doing it the hard way.
Our 2nd weeks starts, builders still here, might be mostly finished today.
Well that is until the kitchen man comes to redo things that are wrong. All
good fun. Oh and just to prove we are in the deepest darkest place in Africa
a quote from the leaflet that came with the toaster in the 'Before First
Use' section ...
... 'Wipe the exterior with a damp Sloth'.
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